Thermostats and other temperature control devices are utilized in residential and commercial environments to control and regulate the environmental conditions within a structure. For example, a thermostat control device can regulate the temperature and airflow provided by a residential or commercial heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) system. HVAC systems have various components or devices (e.g., different heating/cooling elements, fans, temperature and humidity sensors, etc) with varied input and output requirements. However, conventional thermostats often have fixed inputs and outputs for interfacing with a particular component of an HVAC system.
Certain conventional thermostats employ a configurable input terminal or a configurable output terminal that requires separate dedicated circuits for each input type or output type designed for the connection to the respective input terminal or output terminal (e.g., binary, 0-10 VDC, etc). After an input type or output type is selected for a configurable input terminal or output terminal of a conventional thermostat, only one of the separate dedicated circuits corresponding to the selected input type or output type is used. The remainder of the separate dedicated circuits remain unused during operation of the convention thermostat. Thus, such conventional thermostats with configurable input terminals and output terminals wastes real estate on a printed circuit card for each of the separate dedicated circuits, resulting in higher manufacturing costs.